Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller

I just can’t figure out why they’re appearing in the first place.
If it was about exposing me to the press, for any number of the crimes
I’ve had expunged from my record over the years, most likely they would’ve
been leaked already.
If it were Rafe’s doing, I have a difficult time imagining why he’d agree
to give me Elena, effectively terminating his contract with Bollente Media,
and fucking up the mediocre criminal empire he’s built.
Even though his name doesn’t hold as much weight in Boston as it once
did, I still don’t see him resorting to self-sabotage, and then still trying to
extort me in the process.
Leaning back in my desk chair, I stare up at the vaulted ceiling, losing
myself in thought for several minutes. The house is silent tonight, Elena
having turned in with a new copy of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
she bought at the only bookstore on the island.
For the first time in a long time, I reach beneath my dresser, my hand
smoothing past the pistol secured just above my thigh, and tear off the
Polaroid taped to the underside.
Unlike the crumpled, worn one I keep on hand of Violet, this one is so
infrequently handled that it’s still in mint condition; the edges remain
straight, the colors on the picture itself only slightly warped due to the
passage of time. Otherwise, it’s as if the photo’s just popped out of its
camera.
My mother sits up in a hospital bed, a pink bandana pulled tight over her
head, because she’d just begun losing her hair after restarting chemotherapy
treatments.
She’s spooning chocolate pudding out of a plastic cup, staring at
whoever’s behind the camera, but her smile points at me. Even as she sits
there, her body devouring itself from the inside out, she’s trying to reassure
me that everything is okay.
That it will all be okay.
‘That’s the love of a mother,’ nurses would sometimes say, because
keeping in high spirits while trying to fight off a terminal illness isn’t
something everyone can do, year after year, day after day. And yet, she made
it a point to, always trying to get me to see the brighter side of things.
That big, toothy grin of hers stirs an ache within me that I haven’t
allowed myself to feel in years, and a fresh dose of shame injects itself into
my veins, because I can’t stop thinking of how disappointed she’d be in the